Nations

This archive collects milestones and progress stories involving nations — countries and their governments — acting to improve lives, protect rights, or address shared challenges. From policy breakthroughs to international cooperation, these stories show what countries are doing right.

A heat pump unit on a home exterior, representing U.S. heat pump sales growth supported by the Kigali Amendment, for article on heat pump agreement

Heat pumps outsell gas furnaces in the U.S. for the second year running

By / / Good News For Humankind

Heat pump sales have now surpassed gas furnace shipments in the United States for two consecutive years, with more than 4 million units sold in 2023 alone — a milestone that is beginning to look like a permanent market shift. Driven by federal tax credits under the Inflation Reduction Act and additional state-level rebates, Americans are increasingly choosing electric heating over fossil fuels. This matters because home heating accounts for roughly 10% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, and unlike gas furnaces, heat pumps grow cleaner automatically as the electrical grid adds more renewable energy. The two-year streak signals that economics, policy, and technology have aligned in ways that rarely reverse.

Rainforest canopy, for article on tropical forest reserve

The Democratic Republic of Congo to create the Earth’s largest protected tropical forest reserve

By / / Good News For Humankind

The Democratic Republic of Congo just passed legislation protecting 540,000 square kilometers of tropical forest — an area the size of France, and now the largest protected tropical forest reserve on Earth. At its heart is the Kivu-Kinshasa Green Corridor, which aims to create 500,000 jobs by linking renewable energy hubs, sustainable farming, and the communities that depend on the forest. The model is already working at smaller scale inside Virunga National Park, where a similar partnership has generated over 21,000 jobs in five years — 11% of them held by people who left armed militias. It’s a rare plan that treats conservation, poverty, and peace as the same problem, offering a blueprint the world badly needs.

Solar farm from above, for article on India solar capacity additions, for article on India solar capacity

India adds record 24.5 GW of solar in 2024

By / / Good News For Humankind

India’s solar boom hit a new high in 2024, with 24.5 gigawatts of new capacity added in a single year — more than double the year before. A big part of that growth came from rooftops: 700,000 households installed panels in just 10 months, helped along by a new government subsidy aimed at lower-income families. Off-grid solar nearly tripled, bringing electricity to rural communities the main grid has long struggled to reach. India’s total renewable capacity now sits above 209 gigawatts, nearly rivaling Germany’s entire power system. What makes this milestone resonate beyond India is the pairing of massive utility-scale projects with solar that actually reaches ordinary homes — a model the rest of the world’s clean energy transition could learn from.

Landfill. A lot of plastic garbage. Environmental problems., for article on plastic waste ban, for article on plastic bag bans

Thailand bans imports of plastic waste to curb toxic pollution

By / / Good News For Humankind

Thailand’s plastic waste ban took effect in January 2025, closing the door on a trade that brought more than 1.1 million tonnes of foreign plastic scrap into the country between 2018 and 2021. Much of that waste was never recycled — factories often burned it instead, sending toxic fumes into nearby communities and contributing to risks of stroke, heart attack, and dementia. The ban is the hard-won result of years of organizing by Thai activists who documented the harm and refused to let it continue. With global treaty talks still stalled by oil-producing nations, Thailand’s move offers a hopeful blueprint: when communities push and governments listen, the tide on plastic pollution can begin to turn.

Indonesian children smiling, for article on Indonesia free meals program

Indonesia launches free meals program to feed millions of children and pregnant women

By / / Good News For Humankind

Indonesia’s free meal program kicked off in January 2025 by serving rice, vegetables, tempeh, chicken, and oranges to 740 students at a single primary school outside Jakarta — the opening day of an effort that aims to feed nearly 90 million people by 2029. The program targets a stunting crisis affecting more than one in five Indonesian children under five, extending meals to pregnant women because healthy development begins in the womb. Nearly 2,000 local cooperatives will supply the food, channeling income to rice growers, fisherfolk, and livestock producers along the way. It’s a generational bet that nourishing kids today builds the human foundation any country needs to thrive tomorrow.

Facility releasing air pollution|google, for article on China sulphur dioxide reduction

China has reduced sulphur dioxide emissions by more than two-thirds in the last 15 years

By / / Good News For Humankind

China’s sulphur dioxide emissions fell by 70 percent between 2006 and 2017, even as the country’s economy roughly tripled in size over the same stretch. That kind of decoupling — slashing a major industrial pollutant while growing fast — is something climate scientists have long argued was possible but rarely seen at this scale. The shift came from real policy muscle: stricter enforcement, legal accountability for local officials, and a massive pivot to clean energy, with China funding nearly half of global renewable investment in 2017 alone. Coal still looms large and the work is far from done, but this milestone is tangible proof that entrenched pollution problems can move, and quickly, when commitment meets follow-through.

Offshore oil rig at sunset, for article on offshore drilling ban

Biden permanently bans offshore drilling in 625 million acres of ocean

By / / Good News For Humankind

Offshore drilling is now off the table across 625 million acres of U.S. coastal waters, thanks to a sweeping executive action from President Biden. The protections cover the entire East Coast, the eastern Gulf of Mexico, the Pacific shores of Washington, Oregon, and California, and parts of Alaska’s Northern Bering Sea. What makes this move different is its staying power: Biden invoked a 1953 law that legal experts say can’t easily be undone without Congress. Alongside the ocean announcement, two new national monuments in California — both championed by Native tribes — bring his total conserved lands to 10. It’s a quiet but powerful reminder that some places are simply too precious to drill, and that lasting protection is possible when law, science, and community all pull in the same direction.

Prison cell, for article on federal private prisons, for article on death penalty abolition

Zimbabwe abolishes the death penalty

By / / Good News For Humankind

Zimbabwe has abolished the death penalty, and around 60 people who were awaiting execution will now have their cases returned to judges for resentencing. President Emmerson Mnangagwa — himself once sentenced to death during the country’s independence struggle — signed the law immediately after parliament’s vote, ending a practice introduced under British colonial rule. Zimbabwe becomes the 114th country worldwide and the 25th in Africa to fully end capital punishment, joining a steady generational shift away from state executions. One caveat remains: the law still permits the death penalty during a declared state of emergency, which Amnesty International has urged lawmakers to remove. Even so, it’s a meaningful step in a region where the abolitionist movement keeps quietly gaining ground.

Snow leopard, for article on snow leopard population

Kazakhstan’s snow leopard population reaches near-historic levels

By / / Good News For Humankind

Snow leopards in Kazakhstan have rebounded to between 152 and 189 individuals — population levels not seen since the 1980s, and a 26% jump since 2019. Much of the credit goes to expanded protected areas like Ile-Alatau, Altyn-Emel, and Katon-Karagai, where a female with two cubs was recently spotted in territory once considered too marginal for the species. Rangers now use camera traps, drones, and thermal imaging across 14 natural areas, while a compensation program helps herders coexist with the cats instead of retaliating. Cross-border cooperation with Kyrgyzstan extends that protection beyond political lines. For one of the world’s most elusive big cats, it’s a quiet but powerful reminder that patient, coordinated conservation can actually turn the tide.

Onager, for article on onager reintroduction

Asiatic wild asses return to Saudi Arabia after 100 years

By / / Good News For Humankind

Onagers are roaming Saudi Arabia again for the first time in roughly a century, and one of the seven relocated from Jordan has already given birth to a foal. The Persian onager was chosen as the closest living relative to the Syrian wild ass, a subspecies hunted to extinction in the 1920s, making this a careful act of ecosystem repair rather than simple reintroduction. Researchers matched the new home to Jordan’s reserve by vegetation overlap, easing the animals’ transition, with plans to grow the herd and eventually release them across nearly 7,800 square miles. With fewer than 600 Persian onagers left in the wild, every new foothold strengthens a fragile species — and shows what patient, cross-border conservation can quietly accomplish.